MDDM Ch. 32 "a reliable Ticker" (317.12)

[jbor]

Thanks, I'll add that essay to the bibliography.

While I agree that it is an "odd episode", I don't actually think the watch
is an "affront to ... Emerson". In fact, he seems to be quite accepting,
even amused by it. (318.10) And the narrative relates how Dixon thinks that
it "seems odd" that only a decade earlier Emerson had published a treatise
on the topic expressing the opinion that such a mechanism could not be
constructed. Another minor quibble is that the "conclusion to this [...]
tale" isn't in fact the "nasty pun" (why is it a "nasty pun", by the way -
*bad* pun, perhaps, but "nasty"?), as the episode continues on for another
three and half pages.

I think the fact that the watch assumes sentient vegetable form in Dixon's
imagination exemplifies the type and scale of violation, of the "laws" of
physics and nature, and of orthodox Christianity, this man-made mechanism
poses, the havoc it has created in poor Dixon's psyche.

http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~houben/

ULYSSES            "Time hath, my lord,
 A wallet at his back, wherein he puts
 Alms for oblivion, a great-sized monster
 Of ingratitudes. Those scraps are good deeds past;
 Which are devoured as fast as they are made,
 Forgot as soon as done."
 (_Troilus and Cressida_ III, iii, 139-144)

best


 on 9/2/02 5:53 PM, Dave Monroe at davidmmonroe at yahoo.com wrote:

> From Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds, "Sari, Sorry, and the
> Vortex of History: Calendar Reform, Anachronism, and
> Language Change in Mason & Dixon," American Literary
> History, Vol. 12, Nos. 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2000), pp.
> 187-215 ...
> 
> "Recorded time in Mason & Dixon keeps slipping away,
> though it be so much an object of finer and finer
> recalibrations; this kind of time does not perform
> consecutively, will not stay within its prescribed
> lines, just as Pynchon's puns work against
> eigteenth-century language reforms.  An odd episode,
> for instnace, recalls the watch given to Dixon by
> Emerson, unique due to its perfection of chronometry
> even while at sea.  How the watch enacts this
> seemingly magical feat is by breaking the law of
> conservation of energy.  The watch works by perpetual
> motions, an affront to both Emerson and Dixon.
> Though, as Emerson say, ''Tis a Law of the Universe,'
> 'Power may be borrowed,as needed, against repayment
> dates deferrable indefinitely' (317).  Dixon
> concludes, in the face of the lawbreaking watch, 'If
> this Watch be a message, why, it does not seem a kind
> one.' (318).  The watch becomes a terrible burden,
> needing constant surveillance, such that Dixon dreams
> that Emerson has cursed him, on purpose, with the
> gift: 'Did he one day cross some line...?' (320).
> Eventually the watch that by its existence breaks one
> law in order to mark another is eaten by R.C., a land
> surveyor, for whom it has become a real fetish.
> Pynchon's conclusion to this bizarre chronometrical
> tale combines a nasty pun with the book's temporal
> malady: when asked why he didn't just hide the watch
> instead of eating it, R.C. responds, 'There wasn't
> Time' (322)." (p. 3)
> 
> http://www3.oup.co.uk/alhist/hdb/Volume_12/Issue_01/
> 
> --- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I wondered about who that "R.C." might be too.
> 
> Watch out for download time there, that's a PDF file.
> otherwise, if you have MUSE access, try ...
> 
> http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_literary_history/v012/12.1hinds.html
> 
> And, in general ...
> 
> http://www.ipl.org/cgi-bin/ref/litcrit/litcrit.out.pl?ti=mas-264
>